The Rapture Explain Their Judgment Day Boost

If you can remember back to May 21 of this year, some people believed the Spiritual Judgment Day better known as "The Rapture" was coming. And then when May 22 came, it all turned out to be a big hoax. Well, for the "end of days" Rapture that is.

For fans of the band the Rapture, it was a moment to celebrate. Instead of the end of the world, we learned that there was a new album from the Brooklyn dance punks.

Planned as the opportune time to announce their fourth album, In the Grace of Your Love, drummer Vito Roccoforte says the response was unlike what they ever expected.

"It was crazy because we were planning to announce the album around that date and nobody had put together that it was the Rapture and that it would be such a big viral deal that whole thing would be," he tells Exclaim! "We just planned on that day anyhow, and then I started noticing on our Twitter and Facebook, which at the time we hadn't been posting on for years, and then all of a sudden we were getting these weird Rapture references."

Roccoforte says the band really benefitted from the timing because it had been such a long time, five years in fact, since they released an album.

"That weekend, we had more traffic on our site than we've ever had," he says. "And I feel that the whole Rapture deal made people think of our band again. Like, 'Oh, the Rapture. I wonder what happened to them...' So people started checking us out."

Roccoforte adds that money can't buy that kind of attention.

"In terms of publicity, it was amazing for us," he says. "We couldn't have paid for that or done anything else that would have been better. I think we want to end it though with the 2012 Mayan Rapture. That's the whole idea from the album, from start to finish."

As for what the band will be doing on October 21, when the next supposed judgment day is scheduled to hit, Roccoforte says they'll be celebrating appropriately.

"We're playing a party in Philly called Makin' Time. It's a really fun party, usually totally nuts."

In the Grace of Your Love will be out on Tuesday (September 6) via DFA. You can read more of Exclaim!'s Rapture interview here.